


Nanwë (Aragorn)

by kathkin



Series: A Few Notes in the Song of Creation (a Lord of the Rings Dæmon AU) [5]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-17 01:25:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14822588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathkin/pseuds/kathkin
Summary: “I cannot make you trust me, Sam, but we have a hard road ahead of us and the way will be eased if we all trust each other.” / “I dare say it will be."Sam meets Aragorn's dæmon and learns something of his past.





	Nanwë (Aragorn)

**Author's Note:**

> a) Wikipedia on [dæmons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A6mon_\(His_Dark_Materials\)).
> 
> b) [Ground rules for this AU](http://penny-anna.tumblr.com/post/174266827343/ground-rules-for-d%C3%A6mon-au).
> 
> c) See end notes for dæmon key!

“Oh, Sam, will you _please_ stop fussing?” said Frodo. “I thought you’d already made your mind up.”

“I made my mind up to go along with him,” said Sam. “I never said I’d like it.”

“Then can you at least not grumble so?” said Frodo. Perched upon his cloak, Gentian was rustling his wings in rare agitation.

Sam had not thought he was grumbling, so much as advising caution; but Frodo was so wearily plaintive, he didn’t say so. “I’ll not grumble,” he said. “But I don’t see how you can trust someone when you’ve not even seen their dæmon.”

“You heard what Butterbur said,” Pippin chipped in, “that’s just how Rangers are.”

“Well, I never heard the like,” said Sam. “And even if that is how Rangers are, who’s to say he’s not something else pretending to be one? What if he don’t have a dæmon?”

“Lots of kinds of people don’t have dæmons,” said Frodo.

“Gandalf doesn’t have a dæmon,” said Pippin. 

“Those Black Riders don’t have dæmons,” Sam shot back.

“He’s _not_ like them,” Merry said fiercely and abruptly, Grumpy bristling by his side. Sam didn’t have the nerve to argue. Mr Merry hadn’t talked much about his own encounter with the Black Riders, since it had happened, and Sam had not wish to ask questions.

“Little masters,” said Strider, looming over them.

“Strider,” said Frodo. “Sorry for stopping, we were just – talking.”

“I know of what you speak,” said Strider. Then, quite to Sam’s surprise, Strider addressed him directly. “Would you feel better if you had seen her, Sam?”

“That I would,” said Sam. It came out as if it were a challenge, and he supposed it was, in a way.

“Very well,” said Strider.

He walked away from them, a few long, loping paces, up to the crest of the hill. There, raising his fingers to his mouth, he let out a high, keening whistle. At first there was no reply; then against the grey sky Sam saw a shape.

Tiny and black at first, but growing as it wheeled lower and lower. A great brown bird with a white tail, an eagle, by the look of it, but far greater than any eagle he’d ever seen. Just as he thought it was almost upon them it grew still nearer and still larger.

She came to rest upon Strider’s upraised fist. Her wings she spread and flapped once, and then folded. Outstretched each wing must have been as long as Sam was tall, or longer. Her beak was hooked, her eyes yellow and piercing, like a wolf’s.

“This is Theryn,” said Strider. “She goes where she please, but she is my own dæmon. Are you satisfied, Sam?”

She had a presence about her unlike any Sam had felt before. An intensity and a powerful wisdom. She did not look grey or weak like an old man’s dæmon but she felt old. Like her Man she put him in mind of an ancient statue.

The others were looking to him, Sam realised, for his answer. For his approval, even. How was he supposed to give his approval to such a vast and kingly bird – not to mention something so intimate as a Man’s dæmon?

He swallowed, his throat tight. Harebell huddled close by his ankles. “’es,” he said meekly.

“Very well,” said Strider. A flick of his wrist, and Theryn was away.

*

“You do not trust easily. Do you, Sam?”

Sam shifted uneasily. He set a hand on Harebell’s head. “Never have, sir.”

On the other side of their meagre fire, Merry and Pippin were fast asleep. Frodo was resting beside Sam, though whether he was asleep or merely lying still Sam couldn’t say.

Strider sat down beside him, hunched in the sweep of his cloak as Theryn was wrapped in her huge wings. Even seated he cut an imposing figure, made still more imposing by her roosting at his side.

The eagle-dæmon scouted ahead and behind by day, flying high and far, but she could not see in the dark and so most night she returned and became almost like a normal dæmon.

“I cannot make you trust me, Sam,” said Strider. “But we have a hard road ahead of us and the way will be eased if we all trust each other.”

“I dare say it will be,” Sam agreed.

Strider ran a slow finger down the plumage of Theryn’s neck. “Perhaps it would help if I told you more of myself.”

“It might,” said Sam, though he doubted it. He knew little of Strider but enough to know the Man had depths well beyond his ken. He was older than he looked and had travelled further than Sam could imagine. Whatever he chose to share of himself could only ever be a fragment of the mosaic of his life.

For a moment Strider was silent. Then he said, “there is a place far to the North – I will not speak its name, not in these times. A mountainous and blasted stretch of land. Long ago it became so blighted that dæmons cannot tread there.”

It sounded more like an old saying than something real. _So evil even dæmons fear to tread_. But Strider’s face was grave and Sam knew it for the truth. Harebell let out a whimper and Sam’s grip upon her tightened.

“My people guard it well, against the unwary,” said Strider, “and we make use of it.”

“Make _use_ of it?”

“We learned long ago that in crossing it a man or woman can be separated from their dæmon and yet live,” Strider explained. “It takes three days to walk from one end of the pass to the other. I have walked it. Most of my people have.”

Sam could not imagine it. He couldn’t imagine being apart from his Harebell for three minutes, let alone three days. He reached for her and she scrambled at once into his arms, shivering from her ears to her toes at the thought. 

He said, “don’t it hurt?”

“The pain is great, but if you can bear it the reward is worthwhile.” Stride stroked his Theryn again. “You see, Sam, Theryn and I were as you and Harebell once. We chose this path for ourselves. It was not an easy path, and we were both changed by it, but neither of us as any regrets.” He looked at Sam, his face shadowed by the dying fire. “Do you understand me a little better now, Sam Gamgee?”

“I think so,” said Sam. Small wonder Strider was hard, and distant, to have been through something so terrible. “But I don’t understand how you could bear to do it. I could never.”

“There are some among my people who do not have it in them to make the journey,” said Strider. “It takes a certain kind of strength – one that you cannot know if you have, until you are tested.”

Sam nodded, understanding and not understanding at the same time. It was like something out of an old, old tale. Perhaps that was what Strider was, a hero who had wandered out of a story and into the present.

Strider rested a hand on his dæmon’s proud head and said, “her true name is Nanwë. I will trust you with this. Pray do not speak it to anyone else.”

“Nanwë,” said Sam, marvelling at the ancient, elvish feel of the world. “I won’t speak it. I promise.” Harebell shifted in his arms and sensing what she wanted he loosed his grip.

She climbed from his lap and crossed the short distance between herself and Theryn – Nanwë – Strider’s dæmon. There, she did something Sam had never seen her do before; she dipped her head to the eagle-dæmon in something like a bow. “Nanwë,” she said.

“Harebell,” said Theryn. Sam hadn’t heard her voice before. It was strangely deep, fluid, like the rushing of an old, wide river.

Harebell stood a moment longer, looking up at Theryn; then, satisfied, she returned to Sam’s side.

“Try to rest,” said Strider, and touching Sam lightly on the shoulder he rose to put more wood upon the fire.

“You still don’t trust him,” said Harebell into his ear.

Lying beside Frodo Sam murmured, “I’m sleeping, Hare.” He rolled over and into her ear said, “you like her.”

“She’s –” Whatever she was, Harebell couldn’t find the right word, but Sam felt an echo of her meaning, and felt humbled.

“Go to sleep,” he said, and shut his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Dæmons in this fic:
> 
> **Frodo and Gentian:** [pale tussock moth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calliteara_pudibunda#/media/File:Calliteara_pudibunda.jpg).  
>  **Sam and Harebell:** [red cocker spaniel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bojars%27s_english_cocker_spaniel.jpg).  
>  **Merry and Celandine ("Grumpy"):** [red fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fox_-_British_Wildlife_Centre_\(17429406401\).jpg).  
>  **Pippin and Windflower:** unsettled.  
>  **Aragorn and Nanwë ("Theryn"):** [ white tailed eagle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-tailed_eagle#/media/File:White_tailed_eagle_raftsund_square_crop.jpg).


End file.
